Lincoln (58 page)

Unable to think of a polite way to stop the staccato sentences of the boy-governor, Chase turned to one of the officers and said, through Sprague’s lurid description of the battle for Williamsburg, “Tell the President that I am here, with General Wool. Norfolk has fallen.”

This stopped Sprague, to Chase’s serene delight, which was even further enhanced by the arrival of the President, who pounded him on the back with pleasure when he told him what had happened. The President’s happiness was only somewhat marred by the fact that the Navy Yard was still in Confederate hands, and that the
Merrimack
was still at large. “But we cannot have everything, I suppose,” he said to Stanton, who had joined them, eyes streaming with opthalmiac tears. Then Lincoln turned to Wool. “You should make a concerted effort to take the Yard tomorrow.
Failing that, keep the
Merrimack
bottled up; and out of the Hampton Roads. Now, gentlemen,” Lincoln turned to Chase and Stanton, “we’ve been away from Washington too long.”

“At this rate, sir,” said Sprague suddenly, “you could probably end the war before the week is over.”

Lincoln laughed. “Well, Governor, there is such a thing as beginner’s luck, which I am not about to press any further. Since General McClellan is only twenty miles from Richmond, I shall let him finish things off properly.” Lincoln turned to Stanton. “Have you a ship for us?”

“Yes, sir. The
Baltimore
, ready to leave at seven in the morning.”

“We shall be ready.” With that Lincoln disappeared to his room and Chase, well pleased, went to the room assigned him by General Wool, and slept so well and so heavily that he did not hear the explosion in the night. At breakfast, he was told that the rebels had fired the Navy Yard; and blown up the
Merrimack
.

“In one week, thanks to the President,” said Chase to Kate at breakfast, two days later, “we took Norfolk, destroyed the
Merrimack
and secured the Virginia coast.”

“You must take all credit, Father. You chose the landing place. You accepted the key to the city …”

Chase nodded and hummed a few bars of “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” as a quantity of sausage slowly settled in his stomach. It was good to be home again.

“What else did Governor Sprague have to say?” Kate’s hair, that morning washed, was shrouded now in a towel that looked like some exotic Venetian turban.

“He was more talkative than informative. He was commended officially by General Hooker, at the battle of Williamsburg—or skirmish, I suppose it should be called. By now he’s back in Providence, I should think.”

“It’s a pity they don’t give him a proper command.”

Not for the first time did Chase wonder whether or not Kate really liked the little millionaire, who plainly worshipped her in, admittedly, his own highly curious way. “I fear that Governor Sprague lacks the principal prerequisites of a modern general.”

“You mean that he did not attend West Point?”

“I mean that he has not practised law like the best of us generals.”

Kate laughed. “I sometimes think there is probably nothing to being a general but common sense. And luck,” she added, motioning to the butler to pour her father tea.

“He did tell me that he’d be coming here to live, if he does not get a proper command.”

“What will he do here, when all those cotton mills of his are up there?”

“He controls the Rhode Island legislature.” Chase filled up his teacup with sugar. “He will have them elect him to the Senate. That means his term would begin next March.”

“
Senator
Sprague.” Kate looked at her father, thoughtfully. “He would be useful here, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. The Administration needs all the help it can get with Ben Wade and his friends …”

“I was thinking ahead, Father, to 1864 …”

Chase nodded. “Yes, Kate. Senator Sprague would be useful, if the times should require a different president.” Chase looked at Kate, and realized, from her expression, that she would, in due course and entirely for his sake, marry William Sprague IV.

O
N THE
back porch of the Old Club House, Seward lay in a hammock, eyes shut, and ears attuned only to the chatter of birds in the flowering backyard, where huge roses in full bloom made the air heavy with their scent. Congress had dispersed three days earlier, and Seward felt like a free man again, no longer the target of Ben Wade the Bluff and all the other Jacobins who now held him totally responsible for the slowness of the war effort, not to mention the vile continuation of slavery everywhere on earth.

As Seward rocked slowly back and forth in the hammock, he thought, longingly, of sending a detachment of troops to surround the Capitol while Congress was in session. There would be a mass arrest. He himself would speak to the assembled members of the two houses—would they be chained to one another? He left that detail for a later daydream. But, for the present, he was seated in the Speaker’s chair, and smoking a cigar as the terrified members of the Congress stood before him, guns trained on them from soldiers in the gallery. Naturally, he would address them pleasantly; he might even make a joke or two. Then he would explain how no state could support, in time of war, the luxury of such a large, unwieldy
and often dangerously unpatriotic band of men. Therefore, it was with true sorrow that he was dissolving the legislative branch of the government. Most of the members would be allowed to return home. Unfortunately, there were a number who would be obliged to stand trial for treasonable activities. Senator Wade would, of course, be given every opportunity to defend himself before a military court. But should he and the other Jacobins be found guilty, they would, of course, be hanged—in front of the Capitol. Seward was debating whether or not the gallows should be placed at the east or the west end of the Capitol, when the servant announced, “Mr. Chase to see you, sir.”

Seward opened his eyes; and there was Chase, in a white linen jacket, looking reasonably cool on such a hot day. “Forgive me for not stirring,” said Seward.

“You are forgiven,” Chase pulled up a chair and sat at the foot of the hammock—like a physician, thought Seward, motioning to the servant to light his cigar for him. “I’ve been enjoying the peace and the quiet, now that Congress has gone, and we’ve only the war to worry about.”

Chase nodded. “They take up so much time, our old colleagues. I am told that Ben Wade has announced that the country is going to hell.”

“I can only hope that he gets there first,” said Seward.

“Things are coming to a climax, Mr. Seward.” Chase stared at the small figure in the hammock so like, with its short legs and large nose, a parrot fallen from its perch.

“You mean with McClellan?” Seward knew what Chase meant: the freeing of the slaves was now a matter of great urgency. But
whose
slaves? That was the problem. Meanwhile, England and France were more than ever pro-rebel; each nation taking the high line that the Lincoln Administration was essentially indifferent to the fate of the black man, a subject of no particular interest to either power but a highly convenient rationale for supporting the South—and the breakup of the youthful American empire.

Currently, the radical Republicans were threatening to abandon the Republican Party and the Lincoln Administration. Some of the Jacobin firebrands in Congress—yes, he would have them chained to one another, and the executions would take place on the north side of the Capitol—were insisting that Seward, as Lincoln’s evil genius of moderation, resign immediately and that the Joint Committee, together with Chase, free the slaves, sack McClellan and together prosecute the war. Seward was never entirely certain to what extent Chase was involved in these devious plots. He did know that Chase tended to agree with whatever any of the radicals had to say about the President or himself.

“I was not thinking of McClellan, though he is a part of the problem.” Chase had come to detest the Young Napoleon. Ever since he himself had delivered Norfolk into the Union’s hands, Chase had lost all awe of the military. Some organizational ability, a degree of common sense—and courage—were all that was needed. McClellan had only the first. Chase had all the rest; and so did any number of civilian leaders. Even Lincoln was better equipped to conduct a military operation than McClellan, who had got within six miles of Richmond; and then had failed to take the city, though his army outnumbered the rebels at least five to one; and the rebel commander, Joe Johnston, had been seriously wounded at Seven Pines, one of the few real battles of the so-called Peninsula campaign. Johnston had been succeeded by Robert E. Lee, the friend of the Blairs.

During June and July, McClellan continued to ask for more troops. He claimed that Lee had two hundred thousand men, ready to crack the Union army. Actually, Chase had learned that Lee’s army was closer to eighty-five thousand men. In desperation, Lincoln had slipped out of Washington and gone up the Hudson River to the military academy at West Point to confer with Winfield Scott. The result had been that Halleck was soon to arrive as general-in-chief while General John Pope—also from the Western army—was now the commander of a new Army of Virginia, to protect the capital and hold off the alarming “Stonewall” Jackson, who ranged at will up and down the nearby Shenandoah Valley. Finally, with Pope approaching Richmond from the west and McClellan from the east, the city was bound to fall.

McClellan’s troops were still divided by the Chickahominy River; and the rains were falling, and the creeks were swollen. But then while everyone was predicting that with a single stroke McClellan could take Richmond, Lee attacked McClellan; and McClellan lost what little nerve he had. After denouncing the President and Stanton, the Young Napoleon retreated to the James River and set up a new headquarters at Harrison’s Landing.

Since the Confederate government was now conscripting men, Lincoln sent Seward, secretly, to New York City to meet with the Northern governors and ask them to petition the President to call for more troops. As there was now no great general eagerness to enlist in the Union army, the day before Congress adjourned those men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five might be liable for military duty.

But Chase had not come to Seward’s house to discuss McClellan. He had written off McClellan and he knew that Lincoln would, presently, replace him. Chase had total faith in John Pope, a dedicated abolitionist, who had made an excellent impression on the Joint Committee. The war
would come to its predestined end. “But, Mr. Seward, we cannot remain silent any longer on the subject of slavery.”

Chase got the full benefit of Seward’s single, bright parrot’s eye—the nose made it impossible for Chase to see both eyes at the same time of the recumbent Secretary of State.

“Silent? Mr. Chase, we chatter of nothing else. Even the President is beginning to sound like an abolitionist. I told him it would do no good to try to talk to those border-state congressmen. But he thought he had to. So last week he told them he’d pay three hundred dollars a head for each of their Negroes; and they said no.”

“They did not
all
say no.” Chase had thought Lincoln more than usually feckless in the way that he had handled so difficult a business. Lincoln had appealed to their patriotism, which was irrelevant since they were all on the Union’s side, more or less willingly. Lincoln had then made the curious point that as long as they maintained slavery within their borders, the states in rebellion would always feel that one day the border-states would join them; but should slavery be abolished and the slave-holders compensated, the rebel states would not continue to fight much longer. Like so many of Lincoln’s attempts at logic, this essay had left Chase as cold as it had a majority of the border-men present. “But I suppose it is hard for the President to forget that he is a Kentuckian, and that Mrs. Lincoln’s brothers are all at war against us.”

“I think the President is peculiarly able to rise above his brothers-in-law,” said Seward, swinging his hammock in a sort of semicircle, which made Chase dizzy to watch.

“I wish he would rise the entire way in this matter.”

“You would free all of the slaves within the Union?”

“Yes, Mr. Seward, I would.”

Seward was enjoying himself. “And in those states that are in rebellion?”

“I would have the military commanders free them, as each rebel state is brought to heel.”

“The military commanders rather than the President?”

“I think,” said Chase, judiciously, “that is the practical way.”

“I see.” Seward saw that for all of Chase’s passion on the subject of abolition, he did not want the President to get any of the credit for so noble a deed. On the other hand, he would not object to Lincoln taking whatever blame might be handed around.

“I think, Mr. Seward, it is up to us to guide the President in this matter. He will not act of his own accord …”

“You may be surprised, Mr. Chase.”

Chase looked at Seward expectantly. “What form will the surprise take?”

“I think that Mr. Lincoln is thinking hard, and that means that he is about to make a move.”

“You are in his confidence, of course.” Chase was polite; but no more. He knew that if Seward had his way, nothing would be done until after the congressional elections in the fall. As Chase rose to go, Seward got out of his hammock with a surprisingly youthful spring.

“Would that we had a Cromwell!” Seward exclaimed, as he led Chase into the house.

“You?” asked Chase, who had often heard Seward go on in a similar vein.

“Or you. Or even Lincoln.”

“I am sure
he
could never rise to the stern … necessity.”

“Could you, Mr. Chase?”

Chase mopped his brow. The interior of the house was even warmer than the back porch.

“It is tempting, in a war, to give the leadership to one man. But once the war is over, he must, of course, be executed promptly.”

“
I
would avoid that,” said Seward, merrily.

“
Et tu, Brute?
” said Chase, thinking not of Shakespeare but of Scripture and of Christ’s suffering on the cross that man might be redeemed through His blood. Now
that
would be a mighty, worthy fate.